Maximum Security Prison

Three former army officers convicted in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat overpowered their guards, seized rifles and shot their way out of a maximum security prison near Cairo, police said. Interior Minister Zaki Badr placed airports and harbors on alert as part of an intense manhunt for the escapees, members of a Muslim fundamentalist organization known as Jihad, or Holy War.

A former female U.S. Bureau of Prisons supervisor pleaded guilty Monday to having sex multiple times with a male prisoner at a maximum-security prison in Colorado that houses some of America's most notorious criminals. Kellie Kissinger, 34, who directed other prison guards, admitted in U.S. District Court in Denver to having sex with inmate Gerald Bailey at least 13 times from January to May 2000 at the U.S. penitentiary in Florence and pleaded guilty to one count of sexual abuse of a ward.

ANGOLA, La. - In the middle of the rodeo arena, the four men could smell manure from the animal pens and cracklins and caramel corn from the stands as they steadied themselves in their plastic lawn chairs, spread their hands on the red card table in front of them and planted their feet in the mud. They were bracing for the bull. Once it was turned loose, the last one sitting in this game called Convict Poker would win. They looked almost identical in their black helmets, protective vests and striped uniforms.

Toxic smoke from a fire in the women's wing of a prison killed 10 people and injured about 40, officials said Sunday. The blaze at the maximum-security prison began just before midnight Saturday in a pile of mattresses that investigators said contained a petroleum resin that produces a toxic, acrid smoke when burned. Police spokesman Piero Sassi said guards and prison firefighters responded quickly but could not save eight female inmates and two women guards who died of smoke inhalation in the first minutes of the blaze.

Authorities in San Bernardino County are searching for Jeanette Lynn Hughes, who escaped Sunday night from the California Institution for Women at Frontera near Chino, where she was serving a 25-year murder sentence for her role in her husband's 1984 death in their Huntington Beach home. Hughes, 36, disappeared in the late afternoon after visiting with her father, James Tugwell, in the visitors' lounge. She was discovered missing about 9:20 p.m.

Six inmates, including three convicted killers, escaped from a maximum security prison Sunday after handcuffing their guards to a chair and stashing them in a laundry room, officials said. Two of them were recaptured 18 hours later. Two of the prisoners, at least one armed with a homemade knife, had been allowed out of their cells to distribute meals for Ramadan at Riverbend prison, along the Cumberland River.

Rose Braz (letter, Oct. 19) is wrong when she asserts that California does not need the new state prison to be built at Delano. Most California prisons are operating at 180% to 195% capacity. That means thousands of inmates are doubled up in cells built for one person. It also means that gymnasiums and classrooms have been filled with bunk beds for inmates. Such overcrowding is not good for inmates or the employees who supervise them. Our prisons have a critical shortage of maximum-security cells.

The California correctional system is in desperate need of additional prison facilities in order to ease the overcrowding and prevent the early release of convicted criminals who are paroled to make room for someone else. Given this need, I suggest that our community as a whole will benefit by locating a prison facility in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. In addition to punishing, and, hopefully, reforming criminals, I feel that prisons can serve another very important function.

A 13-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who lied about his age was tried as an adult and sentenced to 38 years in prison four years ago for an armed robbery, a newspaper reported Sunday. Luan Van Hoang said he told police his name was Michael Nguyen and that he was 17 to avoid being returned to a California home for juvenile offenders, the Dallas Morning News said.